Pro Football|Nick Foles Can Beat You at Football, Basketball and Ultimate Frisbee

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Nick Foles Can Beat You at Football, Basketball and Ultimate Frisbee

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At Westlake High School in Austin, Tex., Nick Foles was nearly as good on the basketball court as he was on the football field. His coach said he had the shooting ability, court vision and attitude to go as far as he wanted as a basketball player.CreditCreditMelissa Foles

ST. PAUL — The pass that could have derailed Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Nick Foles’s path to the N.F.L. did not come on a football field. It came on a basketball court in Virginia in 2006.

Foles, who had broken nearly all of Drew Brees’s passing records at Westlake High School in Austin, Tex., was six days removed from his football team’s heartbreaking loss in the state championship when he switched gears and traveled to Virginia with his basketball team for a tournament. The trip was rushed to the point where he did not have time to buy a new pair of basketball shoes, so he wore his turf shoes instead.

He also failed to explain to his basketball coach just how sore his shoulder was coming off a long football season.

The plan was for Foles to just watch in his first game back, but after a few of his teammates went down with injuries, he was thrust into action. His coach, Ben Faulkner, remembers Foles dunking the ball once or twice before delivering one of his signature bullet passes. That is when things went wrong: Faulkner’s star guard was clearly in a lot of pain.

“I can still see this in my mind pretty vividly,” Faulkner said in a phone interview last week. “His shoulder is just hanging down by his kneecap and he’s motioning to me, saying: ‘Get me out! Get me out!’ ”

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Foles, left, comforting his teammate Logan Harkness after the Chaparrals lost to Southlake Carroll in Texas’ 5A Division I state championship game on Dec. 23, 2006. Six days later, at a basketball tournament in Virginia, Foles sustained a serious shoulder injury that required surgery.CreditJay Janner/Statesman.com

Looking back, Foles, 29, who will start for the Eagles in the Super Bowl on Sunday, said the labrum in his throwing shoulder was probably hanging by a thread, which should have kept him off the court. But that shoulder injury was the beginning of a hectic journey for Foles, who has essentially been on the move ever since.

The one near constant in Foles’s life has been his confidence, and the confidence he seems to inspire in the people around him. Much of that confidence comes from a natural athleticism that allows him to pick up just about any sport he tries with ease.

In front of the news media, Foles, who is listed at 6-foot-6 and 243 pounds, is reserved and complimentary. He cites his Christian faith, praises his teammates and does everything a public relations staff would ask of a starting quarterback. But his teammates paint a picture of someone brimming with the attitude and ability that led to his being recruited by major Division I programs in two sports.

“He lets everyone know how good of a basketball player he was,” said Zach Ertz, the Eagles’ star tight end. But Ertz, who played basketball for Monte Vista High School in Danville, Calif., couldn’t help but add, “I think I can beat him one-on-one.”

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Foles celebrating with his wife, Tori Moore, after leading the Philadelphia Eagles past the Minnesota Vikings in the N.F.C. championship game on Jan. 21.CreditAl Bello/Getty Images

It was more of the same from Alshon Jeffery, Philadelphia’s top wide receiver, who acknowledged Foles’s basketball skills while insisting he could beat him. But the team’s No. 2 receiver, Nelson Agholor, seemed convinced that Foles could hold his own regardless of the sport he was playing.

“You’ve got to see him in Ultimate Frisbee,” Agholor said. “We do a little conditioning in Ultimate Frisbee in the off-season. This dude’s got hands, got routes. Stupid athletic.”

Faulkner acknowledges having a bias for Foles after coaching him on Westlake’s varsity basketball team for parts of four seasons. He said it was incredible to watch the young player warm up. Foles would shoot 30-footers flat-footed, as if they were free throws, and had a tendency to put so much zip on his passes that his teammates had trouble handling them.

To Faulkner, the only thing that stopped Foles from becoming a Division I basketball player, if not a professional, was the fact that he was never able to make it his top priority.

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Foles, top left, with his fellow seniors in the 2006-7 season. He was limited to one game because of his shoulder injury.CreditMelissa Foles

“At a school like Westlake, and in Texas, period, football rules the roost,” Faulkner said. “It is priority No. 1.”

While everything, on and off the field, seemed to come easily to Foles in high school, the path has not been smooth since. On Brees’s recommendation, he sought out Dr. James Andrews to have his shoulder repaired. He decommitted from Arizona State, choosing instead to go to Michigan State, where he joined a crowded quarterback room with the future N.F.L. players Brian Hoyer and Kirk Cousins. A desire to be closer to his family, and in warmer weather, led him to transfer to Arizona, which in turn led to his being drafted in the third round by Philadelphia in 2012.

From there, his path continued to wind. He made a Pro Bowl for the Eagles after the 2013 season, had a broken collarbone in 2014 derail him significantly, then kicked around from the St. Louis Rams to the Kansas City Chiefs and then back to Philadelphia. His signature confidence was shaken to the point that when the Rams cut him in July 2016, he considered retirement.

Asked if he had truly contemplated walking away at 27, Foles said: “Dead serious. Strong enough to where I thought about where my heart was at that point. And if my heart’s not in it, I’m not going to do it.”

But he gritted out a year as a backup in Kansas City, then reunited with Doug Pederson, who had been Foles’s quarterback coach in his first stint with Philadelphia and was now the team’s head coach. Being back with Pederson seemed to reignite Foles’s ability to believe in himself and have that belief become infectious for the people around him.

That would prove important for the Eagles when their starting quarterback, Carson Wentz, a Most Valuable Player Award candidate, was lost for the season in a Week 14 victory over the Los Angeles Rams.

The offense struggled in the first few weeks under Foles, but his teammates never wavered in their support. Their confidence in him seemed unwarranted, right up until Foles torched the Minnesota Vikings for 352 passing yards and three touchdowns in the N.F.C. championship game. The performance proved he could handle the team’s run-pass option offense — something Foles attributed to his time on a basketball court — and it put the Eagles in their first Super Bowl since the 2004 season.

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Foles and Eagles tight end Zach Ertz, left, were high school basketball players. Ertz says he can beat Foles one-on one.CreditRob Carr/Getty Images

Frank Reich, Philadelphia’s offensive coordinator, said the Eagles knew all along that anyone thinking the team’s season was over because Wentz went down did not understand how good Foles could be.

“I don’t want to say it was comical,” Reich said, “but it was like: ‘It doesn’t matter. We know what we got, and he knows too.’ ”

On Sunday, Foles, 11 years removed from shoulder surgery, four years removed from being a Pro Bowler and two years removed from considering retirement, will face off against Tom Brady of the New England Patriots, the only quarterback to win five Super Bowls. Foles will go in believing he can win the game, as he does whenever he plays basketball, Ultimate Frisbee or any other sport. And his teammates won’t doubt him for a second.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B9 of the New York edition with the headline: Foles Knows He’s Good. Just Ask Him.. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe